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We tried to give our maid the clearest explanation as to how to mop, gave her demo, tutorials in hope one day we would get clean floors. None availed, she just refuse to do it right.
She refuse to understand that the scotch bride microfiber mop isn't an easy way to just glide water around. That moping the floor properly actually requires one to exert some pressure to create friction. She also flat out refuse to understand that one doesn't need a 10 litre bucket full of water to rinse one mop, leave alone that once the water is dirty you actually need to change it and not continue mopping with it.

We reached that point at which we just gave up, we have been mopping after her for years. All the while talking about getting a steam mop for ourselves to just get these floors clean.
While I was sick with Dengue, DH realised how sloppy the maids mopping had become. I was out of bed barely an hour or two a day, and just walking to the kitchen to refil my water bottle was enough to make my feet black. But DH had too much on his plate to think of lecturing her. Beside like me he resigned himself to the fact she is deaf to tips and tutorial that could make her a better more reliable worker.

So this weekend, we gave in. We brought this bad boy in :

We've been thinking about it for a while, the price wasn't even an issue, we knew it would pay itself back in no time. We just kept thinking about the necessity of it. Because we are like that only. We debate purchases on no end. It after all took us 10 years to find a dinner set we really liked. And don't get me started about the furniture. Yes, we take time debating household purchases, and we also wait until microwaves threaten to become fire hazard before replacing them.

So that steam mop was yet another of these infamous debate. Do we need it? Will we really get the whole benefit? Can we postpone it? Aren't we crazy? Are we? Really will we really get any benefit of owning a steam mop over re-moping with a normal one? I think we should? Don't you? Maybe we can wait, it's not that bad...

Except it did get that bad. A couple of month ago I spent an entire afternoon gliding on a soapy with Cif kitchen floor getting all the dirt and grime that comes from cooking with oil off a super old, non vitrified super porous marble floor. I got it all clean, but my body was also all sore and The grease and crap came back a few weeks later. Despite my best attempt at trying to keep it clean. The idea have another "Cif-capade" in my kitchen and threatening to injure myself wasn't appealing.
Attempting to teach my maid once more that a 1200 square foot flat cannot be squeaky clean in 10 minutes of sweeping and mopping combined was equally stupid. We gave her that talk already. She doesn't see a problem hearing that when she is on leave I work 45 minutes on the floor alone to get it clean...daily.

With the sale going on, and the fact we still had credit card points we could redeem in Croma, we decided that now was as much a good time as any. While we are at it, we are also the crazy (yet smart) people who redeem credit card points on store coupons rather than miles (miles never got as as much value for our point as store vouchers did...just saying).

As of this weekend, we are equipped with the coolest cleaning toy around. Not only does it gets all the crap and oil and grime and soot off the floor (buy-bye black feet). We shelled the extra money to get the model that comes with the detachable tank and special nozzles that would allow us to work it like a steam gun of sort and tackle bathroom walls, toilets and kitchen counters. Just this morning I was giving DH a demo on how the brush nozzle was going to solve our black tile grout problem once and for all. He was super impressed and we already decided to tackle the tile grouts in our entire flat over the weekend. We are comitting ourselves to the idea of a super clean flat.

This mop, on top of steaming all the gunk away, also does it on just two cups of water. And that is because our floor needed the TLC. If used regularly I am sure I can bring that down to just one cup.
This left DH and I pondering the fact that while we don't plan on firing the maid because we aren't cold hearted people (we know she needs the money) she is becoming less and less a necessity. And we aren't the only one debating the maid issue. I know many that are debating the possibility to do without one. DH and I estimated that we were one steam mop and one dishwasher away from that reality. We already had the vacuum cleaner, though a heavier duty one would not hurt. We now have the steam mop. And if our kitchen was big enough, or at the most most intelligently planned, a dishwasher would be an expense we would be willing to make.

India gets dirty much faster than Switzerland. Blame it on the insane level of pollution. For years I kept saying that in the absence of proper cleaning tools, maids were a necessity to lighten my household load of chores. But, with India developing, and the approriate appliances and tools getting more affordable and easily available. It is not going to take long before one realise that if they hire a maid they might want to get a better service out of the deal too.
DH and I both can't believe how long we did without giving in to the power of steam. We love our new mop and the promises of cleaner floors.

And this was my Monday rave. I am still trying to get out of the Dengue exhaustion mode and catch up on all the things I didn't do the week I spent in bed. This is also the last week of Ishita going to school only half time. From next weeken onward she is going the whole 7 hours a day long. This will leave me more time to get all my blogging organised.

Except, you don't get brushed by Dengue. No, you get hit by it, hit hard. It rams into you like a speeding truck and leaves you with with the feeling your body actually did go under a truck...for real.

If you were not following me on Twitter or my Facebook page, you probably missed the announcement. I was out of commission last week and some of this week due to being under the lovely spell of the Dengue virus.
Before I continue with my story, two things I want to clarify right away though : It took me nearly 12 years of living in India to get bitten by an infected mosquito. I do all I can to avoid getting bitten. There is no foolproof methods to stay safe from these pesky bloodsuckers. So please, NO advice on how to not get bitten. I already am recovered, I also KNOW the second time you catch Dengue is usually going to be worse...I know.
Second, I KNOW KNOW KNOW about the papaya leaf juice cure. I did NOT do it because papaya is a common cross allergen to latex which I am allergic to. I would have only done the papaya leaf thing if under strict medical supervision, in hospital. Since I did not get hospitalised, I did not do it because an allergic reaction can be more deadly than dengue.
So, keep the comments clean of advices of the two kinds mentioned above...let's see who reads carefully.

So, now that I made my little disclaimer, back to my Dengue story.

It started on the 14th of July. My whole day was uneventful, I took Ishita to the library, then for a walk to the park where I was happy to log 6km of walking. The evening continued nicely, and by about 9pm I told DH that I was calling it a night because I had a rather strong headache and my eyes were burning. Which I thought was from the contact lense and having been up and doing things on my feet the whole day.

This was the first symptom, and is one of the most common Dengue sign : headache and pain behind the eyes.

An hour after announcing I had a headache I was still awake, trying desperately to find a position that didn't I cure pain on all my joints or muscle. Yes it went THAT fast, an hour is all it took for the body pain to reach a debilitating level. I also started feeling cold despite starting to run a fever. I told DH that I was probably going down with a flu like virus, popped a Crocin and tried to get some sleep.
It was broken sleep punctuated by pain that the Crocin never managed to tackle. By the morning my fever was at 102.7 and I could barely walk.
This is when I told DH that it was not a normal virus and I first really suspected Dengue. We waited until Ishita came back from school before heading to the doctor.

Doctor, who sent me right away from a test to rule out Malaria and Dengue along with the first blood count test. We were told that all tests would come back by the evening. Before I left the doctor prescribed stronger paracetamol dosage, a vitamin supplement and the order to DRINK DRINK DRINK. He told DH to make sure there was a supply of juice, water and more important than all : electrolytes for me to tap into. He even told him Gatorade was a good one to turn to.

My kitchen counter was therefore overtaken by the sports drink bottle, along with coconut water bottles and a few juice cartons. It is still so.
By 6pm on Wednesday we knew it wasn't Malaria, and that my white blood cell count was low, and platelets were within normal but could be higher. The dengue report wasn't ready just yet and we had to wait another day to get it. The doctor told me to keep on drinking, keep on resting and come back the next day.

The dengue result came the next evening. Very positive and immediately got DH worried. As for me? I was oddly at peace. The doctor told us the plan: going for a complete blood count test daily to watch for both the white cells and the platelets. As long as my platelets stayed above 45k I was fine to stay home. Note that anything below 150k is low, but still manageable from home. He repeated his order to DRINK DRINK DRINK.

It is super massively important to drink tons when you have dengue. To the point of ending up on the toilet seat every 2 hours. According to the doctor, a well hydrated body makes a huge difference in managing dengue and it's nasty symptoms. They hook people to IV when they get hospitalised, those who stay home must drink like sponges. Food isn't that important, not as important as drinking fluids. During that past week I easily drank 7-8 litres of fluids a day, and at one point I even felt the beginning of a UTI coming because that was still not enough. When you drink that much, trust me your stomach will not want to accommodate food.
I never had nausea, but hunger was down until this past weekend. All I felt like eating were oranges, bananas and pomegranate. That is it! Kid you not, everything else I attempted to ingest tasted like utter crap. My tastebuds were ruined and I decided it was better to follow my own body's lead.

The fever went away on day 3. Leaving me with the body ache from hell (they don't call Dengue breakbone fever for nothing). My platelets dropped to 140k on Friday and my doctor told me I officially entered the "Complication phase". Saturday my count went slightly up at 143k and my doctor was puzzled to see the numbers go up that quickly. He asked me to keep on repeating the tests daily. The tests we took on Sunday only came back this Monday and I had dropped to 130k. But that wasn't the most striking symptom.

In the night of Sunday to Monday I was kept awake. Not by the joint pain, that one left me alone. But by a mad itching of my feet and palms. An itching that made me remember my childhood and coping with chicken pox. An itching WORSE than chicken pox by a mile! An itching that makes you want to cut your hands off and tear your skin to shred.
Sure enough, the skin was starting to look red, blotchy and I was stuck with the typical Dengue rash. Rash which by the way almost always comes toward the END of the infection, never at the start. The doctor prescribed me some anti itching medicine, and told me that the itching usually means the complication phase is about to end soon. That Monday the platelets sank to 99k so he also told me to keep on drinking tons of fluids.

Finally yesterday, my platelets went back up to 104, the rash went away, the white cells count was for the first time since the very start up to normal and the itching was minimal. The doctor announced that as far as things looked, I was entering the recovery phase of Dengue. I can't tell you how elated and happy I was inside. I have one more blood test to go to today to confirm it. But it is the first day I feel somewhat myself again.

Before leaving the doctor's office, he turned to Ishita and told her "Your mom is a fighter you know that?". I don't think she understood what that meant. But I knew.

Dengue affects people differently, some can't avoid being hospitalised, some have almost no symptoms. Some just like me run a fever for a few days and then recover at home, others are put in life threatening scenarios. It is not possible to tell who is going to be affected how. But, young and healthy individuals usually fare better.
I am the type that very rarely fall sick to begin with. Last time I was in bed with a fever was 2 years ago with a mild case of flu. I eat healthy and maintain a healthy level of activity in my daily life. So, there might be a chance that this played in my favour coping with Dengue the way I have.

What is important to know and do when you have Dengue or suspect it is this :

- Report to the doctor as soon as you have an unexplained fever with body ache. Insist on getting tested right away. There are early detection blood tests.

- Immediately start keeping yourself hydrated the instant you have fever. Even if you don't know yet if it is dengue, your body will need the fluids. A 103 degree fever will deplete you of fluids very quickly, don't let that happen. And don't drink too hot fluids, don't encourage the loss of fluids by inducing unnecessary sweating. My doctor was clear that fluids should be had at room temperature.

- If you suspect dengue, DON'T take ibuprofen or aspirin, they can trigger some bleeding. Stick to paracetamol, and paracetamol only. Dengue is a virus, so antibiotics are not to be prescribed. They will not work.

- It's ok not to feel hungry at all. Trust me it is OK. My doctor stressed it from the start. Food becomes secondary. And in most cases, the appetite is the first thing that will leave you. It WILL come back once your body will feel able to tackle digestion. If all you feel like eating is fruit and crackers, then be it. This is why doctors ask you to drink juice and electrolytes. Mine even prescribed a vitamin supplement from the start.

- The sooner you get checked and monitored for Dengue, the better. Do not delay seeing a doctor.

- Give yourself time. Recovery will take time. This virus pretty much siphon you. Leaves you tired, drained and flat. Don't expect your energy levels to get back to normal right away. It is ok to just lie down and watch TV. The house chores and duties can wait a bit longer, if they can't enlist help.

On these words, I am going to take my own advice and rest. I am in the recovery phase. It will take time, and my priorities are going to lie with my own self for a while. There will be blog posts, but I can't guarantee the type of frequency I had before. Not until I really feel good and back to normal, which as of now isn't.

Ciabatta is a bread that has the tang of a sourdough bread and the thick moist inside of a yeast bread. A perfect bread to have a side with your meal or for a sandwich.
A true ciabatta takes time to make, and the more time you can give to you starter and then your dough to prove, the better the bread will be.

Making a starter is an absolute must for this bread, you won't get its distinctive sour tang without it. The longer you let your starter develop, the more distinctive the taste in the final product will be. For a ciabatta, your starter should be left to ferment between 12 to 24 hours. You will therefore need to plan things in advance

For the starter1/4 tsp of dry yeast1 cup of white flour 1/3 cup water
In a glass, dilute the yeast in about 1-2 table spoon of lukewarm water and let it rest for 5 minutes for the yeast to start doing its yeasty thing (looking creamy and starting to bubble)

In a mixing bowl, put one cup of flour, the yeast mix and the water and mix. You should get something that looks like the picture above : a very sticky dough. Cover the bowl with cling wrap and let it rest for 12 to 24 hours at room temperature.

By the time you are going to make your bread dough, the starter should look like this :

The best is to make the starter in the late afternoon the day before if you plan to bake your bread the next morning.
Once your starter is ready, you can make your bread dough. Remember the longer your starter was left alone the stronger the flavour it will give to your bread.

For the dough2 1/2 cup white flour2tbsp olive oil, plus extra for coating1 tsp dry yeast2tbsp lukewarm milk1 1/2 teaspoon saltWater as needed
First, dilute the yeast in the warm milk and let it do its yeasty magic (5 minutes). While your yeast gets all yeasty pour your flour and salt in a large mixing bowl.

Add the yeast, oil and the whole starter to the mix and stir with a spoon at first. Then or use the dough hook on your mixer or your hand to combine while adding water. You are looking at achieving a dough that will be elastic but slightly sticky. Once you have that consistency make a ball and coat it in a little olive oil and place it in the bowl.

It should look like this :

Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and let it rest until it nearly doubled in size, that should take you about an hour and a half. Less if you live in a hot climate.

Once your dough has risen, it will still look sticky. Knock the dough back, this means punch it to get the air out, and transfer to a clean flat surface dusted with enough flour. The dough will be sticky, i can't stress that enough. Roll your dough in the flour and cut your ball in half.

Shape each halves into an oblong loaf and transfer to a backing sheet covered with baking parchment.
Then, dip your fingers in more flour and start poking your loaves a little, they should be a bit flattened on top. Dust with some more flour and cover the baking sheet with the kitchen towel.

Let the loaves rest for at least 30 minutes, one hour being better. This phase is called proving, the yeast will continue working its magic during that time.

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees, and I mean PREHEAT it, it has to be hot. I do mine for 20 minutes, but if you have a larger oven, feel free to let it preheat longer, you want the inside to be uniformly hot.
Shove you loaves in once it is hot and back for 20-25 minutes. The top should be light brown.

Transfer to a cooling rack and enjoy as warm as you wish (cold works too, but nothing beats the taste of still warm homemade bread).

In mumbai's humidity, the crunchy crust will not stay crunchy long, so eat it fast. It goes well with soups, as a side to continental dishes or used to make a sandwich...enjoy!

I don't think I have ever been so exited about a cookbook. And, I love cooking, love cookbooks and discovering new recipes.
But this book, first caught my attention in a coffee shop in Delhi. I KNEW I had to get it. Last week I decided to splurge.

There is not much to rave about in the world of Indian cookbooks. We all know Tarla Dalal, her books are uninspiring, and her recipes rarely work if you follow them to the T. Then there is Nitha Metha whose books are really geared toward the housewife who wants to add more prestige to her cooking repertoire. The recipes are more or less working but it lacks the excitement that should go with cooking. And then there is Sanjeev Kapoor who really was the only one to really put the fun in cookbooks...as long as you are an adult that is.

This cookbook by Master Chef's host and Michelin Chef is the first Indian one that is geared toward kids. And I mean it as in INVOLVING kids in the process. All the other cookbooks author had a kids reciepe book, but it was more about teach "Mrs Kumar" how to creat perfect tiffin that will shut the other "Mrs Kumar" accross the street up. None of them had real healthy fare to begin with, and none really spoke to a child.

In the introduction paragraph of Young Chefs, Vikas Khanna speaks of his childhood memories spent in the kitchen with his grand mother and how it ignited his passion for cooking.
I can relate, I have the fondest memories from my childhood originating from a kitchen, be it my mom's (or rather my dad's) and both my grand mothers. I even remember having a children cookbook around at one point.

This book is well made, with very attractive pictures, lots of tips, and a section that clearly shows it is a cookbook meant for children to cook as the picture above shows. Parents are to be in charge of the knives and stove, kids help with the prep time. It has step by step pictures with short and clear instructions that both kids and adult can follow together.

Another super strong point of that book is that it opens a child's horizon on food. You will find good old desi classics like poha, chutneys, tikka masala and paneer. But you will also find healthy continental fares such as pasta salad, pesto sticks, lamp hot pot, smoothies and pizzas completely made from scratch.
None of the recipe in this book has unhealthy over cooked, gooey looking food.

All dishes involve a riot of colour from vegetables to fruits, and everything is made from scratch. Be it the recipe to make yeast bread to the one to make chocolate truffles.
Ishita alread announced she was going to help me make a pizza today, and I myself found myself wanting to try all of the recipes...that is how exiting this book is.

That said, if you are vegetarian, you might not get as much out of this book as an omnivore would. This book is not going to offer you veg substitute, though most recipe can be adapted to your diet need.

If you want to get your children involved in the meal cooking process, this is where to start, and I highly recommend this book to get them interested.

In the course of this Summer, I managed to kill all the plants I had (and there weren't a lot left to begin with). The trip to Delhi and Kasauli was the final straw in the dry stack that my greens have become (what can I say...I kill plants).

The balcony which is otherwise an nice and refreshing spot to sit in was a sorry site. To add to misery, an old stick mobile made a year or so ago was really starting to look dull and boring as well.
Something had to be done! And while plants buying had to wait for us to have time to do it (namely after the birthday party), getting rid of the old mobile and trade it for a new one was a quick and easy project.

All you need is a bunch of coloured ice cream sticks (known as Popsicle sticks by some) and some thread. My craft stores sells these in colours, but if all you can find are natural wooden sticks, go ahead, you will just have to paint them yourself.

All you need to do, is take some thread, fold the length in half and tie the sticks individually between the two strands. Continue doing so until you reached the desired length and tie a ring on one end to hang to a hook.
To make it a bit more sturdy and ensure the sticks do no slide out of the thread, you can put a small dot of glue on the thread where it touches the middle of each sticks.

The gravity and wind will do their part and make each stick twist and spin independently. And there you go, an easy, less than an hour long craft project that will bring colours into your space.

I, of course, got plants this weekend, so now my balcony looks refreshing and happy again. I am convinced that my dangling rainbow is what motivated us to tackle this plant problem quicker than we would otherwise had. It would have been a crime to let this poor little rainbow all alone on a balcony of dried dead plants.

And please don't start betting on how long they will stay alive. There is no fun in making fun of a brown thumbed being. It's not our fault we kill plants, we were born like this...

If you have been following this blog for a while, you know about the issues I have with dry yeast in India. Branded yeast available in stores plain old SUCK. There is probably no word strong enough to describe how I feel about what is available in supermarket without resorting to foul language.
It doesn't rise, sometimes doesn't even dilute right and it can even make you doubt your own baking skills at time. This is how bad it has been for years. So bad, that I used to ask family and friends to bring me dry yeast packets when they were visiting me.

I had quite a stock of these, a stock that finally ran dry, leaving me with few alternatives. The wisest, being to head down South to Crawford market to buy fresh yeast in bulk and freeze it. The other often cited alternative being to find a reliable baker in your neighbourhood to supply you with fresh yeast (none exist in my neighbourhood).
This is when I remembered a website called CCDS that cater to bakers and sells cake decorating tools and baking supplies. Including this :

Baker's yeast! They sell it in packs of 125g for 150 rupees and ship accross the country. I figured out that I had not much to loose trying that one out. After all the worst case scenario would have been that the yeast didn't work.
It turns out that this is a very good quality yeast, that gives an excellent rise and makes for soft elastic bread. The only thing to mind, is that the pack needs to be stored in the freezer once opened. Yeast gets activated by heat and humidity, two things of which there is absolutely no shortage of in Mumbai.

You need about one teaspoon to one teaspoon and a half yeast for each 500g of white flour (more if you are using whole weat).

These past few days have been ridiculously hectic for me, to the point of feeling stressed out. Baking bread is therapy, kneading and pounding dough alone is an amazing stress buster, and the smell of freshly baked bread melts the remaining tensions away. This is yesterday's baking session that reminded me I had this picture on my iPad and the potential for a blog post ready.

I'll probably be a more regular and grounded blogger once Ishita's birthday party will be over, and school days will become longer than 3 bloody hours early in the morning (don't get me started just now, I might spit a novel on that). Truth be told, I have a million ideas, projects and draft going around (nothing unusual) and not enough quiet time to work on them (Introvert problem).

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